I remember well the afternoon Sufjan sent me the full, near-final record. It was fall 2014 when he sent it, mid-day on a Friday. With Sufjan you never know what you're going to get when he sends a new record, so I started to listen to it at work while trying to answer emails. I knew within moments that was a mistake.

So, after getting the kids in bed that night, my partner and I sat down in the living room and we started playing the record.

The sequence hadn't been finalized yet, there weren't yet track titles, and so my listening started with a track that ultimately ended up on "Greatest Gift," went to "Should Have Known Better," and ended with "No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross." It was a brutal sequencing that left me wordless. I remember laying on the floor at the conclusion of "No Shade," feeling, well, floored.

Up to that point, Sufjan had been quite distant about his upbringing, utilizing artifice and themes and concepts to put distance between himself and his listeners. This album threw caution to the wind with regards to artifice.

When I talked to Sufjan on the phone the very next morning, my advice was to not release the record.

He of course did not follow my advice, that time, and we're all better for it. I seem to recall him saying something along the lines of "This is something I have to do."

To say that this record saved lives is an understatement. There's something important about the way great songwriters write, in how they're able to speak to something at once so personal and esoteric, and yet at the same speak to something in all of once.




In the years since this record, I've been dismayed a few times by some of the depictions of Sufjan in culture, in the wake of Carrie & Lowell. One viral video that went around several years back portrayed Sufjan randomly whispering under tables. People have frequently characterized Sufjan as a "sad boi" many times over. These all bothered me, every time; I didn't find them either true or funny. As a culture, we shame or mock people who are vulnerable with their emotions, and that is not ok. There's also a toxic gendered aspect to this all all: women are supposed to be emotionally vulnerable in public, men are not, and when men are (or women aren't), we call it out. That is also not ok.

I suppose a more generous take here is that we just don't quite know what to do with our sadness, what to do with loss, and so instead of facing it, we laugh, or we distract.  Because what I heard when I listened to Carrie & Lowell that Friday night in 2014, and when I still hear it today, is not sadness. What I hear is resolution, and by that I mean this album is the sound of someone facing into loss, then speaking about it publicly, and ultimately coming through the other side. This album isn't the expression of a sad person; it's the expression of a resolute person. This album is, to me anyway, an declaration of resilience; resilience meaning surviving, meaning sticking around when sticking around doesn't really make sense. Resilience shares a Latin root with residence, doesn't it, to reside, but the etymology of the word implies also a bounce back, a kind of residing in the place to which you bounce back to from something that knocked you back. The ability to hold to, despite; if you will. In a later song on "The Ascension" record, which I see as a kind of sequel to Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan sings, "Well, I'm just glad that I'm still alive / For what hasn't killed me will make me stronger." I should talk professionally about the record. I could talk about that a lot, as I am very proud of my work on this record. But I'll speak to just two things for now, both tied together in the way I see my work:

I often see my job at a record label or really anywhere as being Fan in Chief. Empathy has lost parlance in marketing in the last few years, but I still hold to empathy as a critical value for understanding how to maintain human dignity when selling things. When we talked about how to market Carrie & Lowell, how to take something like this and sell it (goodness), it was crucial to be forthright, to lose any artifice, to be up front about it all, and let the music speak for itself. This is harder said then done, but I think we did it. To me it was important that people could purchase this record easily. We kept the packaging to a minimum - no small feat with a Sufjan project - so as to keep cost down. When vinyl was going nuts with add-ons and colors, this made Carrie & Lowell almost nearly a check-out aisle purchase. This approach made the record one of the highest selling vinyl projects that year, charting with Adele, Taylor Swift, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Miles Davis. It is probably one of the highest selling independent vinyl record albums of the past 20 years. This album was releasing at the start of the peak of Spotify, so it was crucial for me to emphasize the physical product, to focus on the complete listening experience of an album from start to finish, rather than on detached and decontextualized singles. Listening parties are common now, but I did that for Carrie & Lowell in 2015 not to start a trend, but because I wanted fans to experience the record as I had: from start to finish, with full attention. To give it berth, as I said it once. So we held advance "silent" listening parties with headphones, lyric sheets, and records. We held them globally, at record stores, so people could see and feel and experience the record. Some of these listening parties had 10 or 15 people, some had hundreds. Fans loved it; they didn't just buy the record, they exchanged numbers, they left talking about the record. I have to be honest that I haven't listened to this record much in the last few years. Maybe I frontloaded all my listening to this record way back. The record has also, for me anyway, taken on some new meaning in many ways that makes it more difficult to listen to, the last few years of Sufjan's story notwithstanding. Loss is a constant, it seems, for all of us, no matter and that fact is a tough one to face into. A few weeks ago, a friend lost his sister after just five weeks from diagnosis. Today is the thanatosversary (my therapist's term to designate an "anniversary" of loss) for a friend who lost his partner of many years last year on this day to brain cancer. I could go on and on and so could you. We are all losing, all the time, it sometimes seems.

And for my part, I would rather distract, ignore, repress, and in general avoid the uncomfortable feeling of acknowledging this loss, rather than practice the resilience demonstrated on Carrie & Lowell. I guess that's generally true of all of us.

Maybe that's why we need Carrie & Lowell now more than ever. A couple of summers back, "Fourth of July" went viral on TikTok and it became a "Summer of Sufjan," according to people with very large followings on the platform. At first I saw this as trite, as I did the "sad boi" stuff a few years back. But with time and perspective, I've come to see these responses with deep gratitude and graciousness and, I think, with a better understanding.

This record, as specific as it is, gives a universal permission for all of us to face the losses incurred upon us, to see the cards dealt as they have been, to grieve it all, even if we don't and certainly can't understand the nature or reasoning of our loss. Sufjan's music on this record puts a soft, gentle beat to loss, I think of the pit-pat in "Should Have Known Better," the music a cadence like an almost-not-but-still-just-there heartbeat. We don't know what to do with loss, do we, but Carrie & Lowell is a kind of roadmap of resilience, a pathway to persist. We can follow this path, even if we're clumsy and awkward and messy about it all. So, I am ok with the clumsiness around sadness and grief and loss. We can't not be clumsy, I guess, and that is not only ok, there is something beautiful about it, a little bit like the cracked seems in the photo that is on the front of Carrie & Lowell. Today, ten years after its release, I feel so tremendously honored to have worked on such an important piece of work. I think a lot about how this album will endure long after I am gone.

Hilton Als eventually wrote the onesheet for the album, and nothing can compare to his writing, of course. However, an early draft of a onesheet by a friend said the below about the album, and I find it holds as much truth as Hilton's take, maybe more so today in 2025 than ever. Given the ways in which our world is robbing our faith, coming in like a thief in the night, there is something important about the way that Carrie & Lowell has and will continue to be a reassurance to so many. This album is a gentle companion to so many, myself included, for the dark times which we all face.